Amnesty by another name is still amnesty: Bush
compounds an immigration disaster

By W. James Antle IIIweb posted January 12, 2004

When President Bush unveiled his vision of what a "more rational, and
more humane" immigration policy would look like, he went out of his
way to insist that he opposes amnesty. The initial Washington Post report
on details of the plan characterized it as something other than a "blanket
amnesty." But to offer legal "temporary worker" status and
eventually U.S. citizenship to any large number of illegal aliens is simply
amnesty dressed up as something new – and is likely to produce the
same results.

Bush's proposal is supposed to be more of a general framework than a detailed
program and no actual legislation implementing it has been introduced as
of this writing. But if anything like it does become law, it will stand as
the most disastrous action of his presidency. Despite all the cosmetic improvements
to border security the Bush amnesty-by-another name plan is said to contain – to
make it, as the Washington Post reported, "more palatable to conservatives",
in reality it takes already porous borders and pries them further open still
at the expense of American taxpayers and workers.

Amnesties send an unmistakable message to would-be illegal aliens that a
country's borders are not to be respected and its immigration laws are not
to be taken seriously. The end result is more illegal immigration: After
the last amnesty in 1986 (and after it became clear that the federal government
was not serious about enforcing the sanctions against employers of illegal
workers that were adopted at the same time to make that legislation "more
palatable to conservatives" also), the population of illegals increased
from about 2.7 million then to 8 to 12 million today. "Temporary workers" have
a similar result. As John O'Sullivan, editor of The National Interest and
an editor-at-large of National Review, recently wrote, "Experience
from Germany to California shows that 'guest-worker' programs invariably
increase illegal immigration since they create welcoming cultural enclaves
of foreign nationals into which the 'illegals' promptly vanish without
trace."

Then there is the matter of these temporary workers and illegal aliens having
babies on U.S. soil. A peculiarity of the Fourteenth Amendment automatically
confers citizenship upon these children, keeping their parents in the country.
As these immigrants are legalized, they will bring in still more relatives
under the law's family reunification provisions. Chain migration has been
constant feature of our post-1965 immigration policy. The end result of the
Bush plan will be to compound this and increase both legal and illegal immigration
massively.

Proponents of amnesty by another name, particularly its conservative defenders,
insist surrender is the only realistic approach to our out-of-control immigration
system. We share a border with a country significantly poorer than us and
we are creating a surplus of critical jobs that Americans just won't do.

Yet other countries seem able to enforce a tolerable level of immigration
restrictions, including the U.S. up until recent decades despite the income
gap between it and its neighbor to the south. That neighbor, Mexico, still
does to this day – faced with even poorer and less stable neighbors
to its south, it is hardly a beacon of open borders. Serious border enforcement
could do something to cut the 700,000 to 800,000 annual illegal entries,
while stepped up domestic enforcement can reduce the incentive for such entries.
As for these jobs Americans supposedly won't do, the fact is that they won't
do them at their current wage rates. Encouraging the mass importation of
cheap foreign labor – whether illegal immigrants or federally approved "temporary
workers" – insures that these wages will continue to remain below
what most Americans can accept.

The underlying assumption that our economy would be imperiled by cutting
off the flow of legal and illegal immigrants significantly less skilled than
the U.S. labor force is highly questionable. The consensus among labor economists,
as found in the National Research Council's 1997 New Americans study and
elsewhere, is that the economic gain from this is miniscule. Balanced against
the enormous fiscal strain it puts on the areas most heavily impacted by
failed immigration policies as well as the tendency of reliance upon cheap
labor to retard mechanization, it may be a wash or worse.

Nor will it do to say that we're stuck with the 8 to 12 million illegal
immigrants who are here, so the only thing we can do is legalize them. Regardless
of the feasibility or even desirability of mass deportations, to say that
we must either tolerate large numbers of illegal aliens or deport upwards
of 12 million people is a false choice. We already deport more than 300,000
people per year. Is it not feasible to increase this number somewhat? Although
the numbers are in dispute, the late INS managed to deport upwards of a million
illegal aliens in 1954. But in any event, we would not have to find and deport
every single illegal immigrant in America. An increase in deportations would
send precisely the opposite message as amnesty: That the U.S. is serious
about protecting its borders and enforcing its immigration laws. Sending
this message would do as much to discourage illegal immigration as amnesty
would do to increase it.

National Review editor Rich Lowry made this point in a recent syndicated
column on "do-it-yourself deportation." In the two years following
9/11, deportations of Pakistanis, Jordanians, Lebanese and Moroccans doubled
and this prompted many to leave on their own. Lowry observed, "The Pakistani
Embassy now says that more than 15,000 Pakistani illegals have left the country
since Sept. 11." But no one should be surprised to discover that failure
to enforce the law yields more immigration violations.

The argument that meaningful immigration control is a politically popular
but practically impossible policy is simply an excuse. It is not the majority
of Americans who lack the political will to effectively enforce immigration
laws. Immigration is an issue where there is sizeable disconnect between
elite and general public opinion. If empowered to do so, ordinary Americans
would likely be a great deal tougher than a political elite that long ago
stopped trying to uphold the law in this area.

Any immigration policy, no matter how liberal or selective, needs to be
enforced in part through deportations if it is to be law rather than anarchy.
If the Bush administration is reluctant to enforce the law against the present
illegal population, why are we to believe that it will do any better enforcing
the terms of its temporary work visas?

Indeed, the most radical aspect of Bush's plan is not even its offer of
amnesty in all but name. In addition to forcing American workers to compete
with illegal aliens, the temporary workers' program apparently forces them
into competition with the entire human population of the planet Earth. In
announcing the program, Bush said its purpose is to "match willing foreign
workers with willing American employers, when no Americans can be found to
fill the jobs."

On the surface, this is a conservative-sounding proposal that appears to
be aimed at making sure that immigrants have jobs, as opposed to being dependent
on public welfare payments, and helping businesses find willing workers.
But on more careful examination, it commits the federal government to ameliorating
poverty everywhere in the world except among the American people.

Although Bush claimed that employers seeking to avail themselves of workers
under the program "must first make every reasonable effort to find an
American worker for the job at hand," it offers no guarantee that it
must offer wages that Americans would be willing to take. The only specific
requirement that the administration has thus far made public is that the
jobs must pay the minimum wage. A full-time worker earning the federal minimum
wage makes less than the official poverty line for a family of three. Steve
Sailer also noted in an analysis for UPI that the "every reasonable
effort to find an American worker" requirement is undermined by Bush's
further stipulation that employers should be able to "find workers quickly
and simply."

In fact, the only logical reason for the businesses to be able to hire lower-skilled
workers under this plan would be to reduce labor costs. As Sailer noted, "rules
that would be effective at keeping up the wages of workers would undermine
the fundamental goal of this plan."

Already the plan is being supported by telling the stories of good and decent
people, many of them minorities, who overcame great obstacles to get to the
U.S. and who stand to improve their lives by residing here. Of course, you
can read Michelle Malkin's Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores to learn that not everyone
who has benefited from our lax immigration system has been so noble or entered
with such good intentions. But there is a great deal of truth in many of
these positive stories.

Yet there are perhaps billions of good and decent people all over the world
who would see their standard of living increase if they resided in America.
We cannot possibly admit all of them without reducing the quality of life
for all Americans. You can also write moving stories about the good and decent
American workers, many of them minorities, who are struggling and will see
their wages reduced and their jobs vanish as a result of this plan and others
like it. Isn't the federal government's first responsibility to the working-class
whites, blacks and Hispanic Americans who are own citizens and countrymen?

This brings us to the worst part about Bush's plan. It makes the assumption
that the universal aspiration to improve one's own living standard and that
of their family is identical to the desire to become an American. Many people
love their own countries, cultures and customs as much as we Americans love
ours. Not all of them identify with our country as their own, even though
many of them could make more money living here. But the purpose of our immigration
policy should not be primarily to serve as a jobs program for the rest of
the world; it should be to create new Americans.

In other words, this plan takes everything that is wrong with our deeply
flawed immigration system and makes it worse. It devalues U.S. citizenship
and makes the desire to become an American a purely commercial venture. It
looks at immigration as something to benefit the few rather than the nation
as a whole. It fails to protect borders and adequately deter illegal immigration.
It throws assimilation, culture and social cohesion out the window and makes
the whole process about money. It equates our obligation to the whole world
with our obligation to our fellow Americans. It takes neither Americans nor
foreigners seriously.

In other words, it is a monumental mistake. America's immigration disaster
is fueled by three forces: Mexico and other countries' desire to use the
emigration of their poor as a safety valve so they can escape needed reforms,
the welfare state's need for new clients and business' need for cheap labor.
Both major parties are acting in accord with these forces and hoping to reap
political benefits as a result. Bush in particular labors under the delusion
that this will somehow aid his 2004 reelection bid.

It almost certainly won't. I'm a supporter of President Bush. But I must
admit, at times like these he makes it very hard.